Writing tip#6 – Break them up

admin, December 4, 2018

No, I’m not talking about those lovely couple.

Break up your ever long sentences.

Writing long and loaded sentences doesn’t really mean I am sophisticated. In fact, it screams ‘unorganised’ in the head and ‘impatient’. Even worse, I am stingy. I want to stuff as many ideas and facts into this sentence so that I save space or word count.

But which sentences are long? try reading it out loud without pausing to breathe in between. Out of breath? That’s long!

More than one main idea in a sentence? that’s long.

More than one comma in there? that’s probably long as well.

See if you can get the feeling from reading this example written in a long versus a short one:

‘ Cigarette smoking impairs the anti-oxidative system, which largely depends on the activity of Nrf2 and Ahr, both of which need to translocate to the nucleus and bind to their response elements ARE and XRE, respectively, in order to induce the expression of anti-oxidative and cell defence enzymes, which show a high expression after acute exposure of endothelial cells in vitro to cigarette smoke but are inhibited after prolonged exposure and in the blood vessels of cigarette smokers, who interestingly needed a coronary artery bypass graft surgery at a younger age than cardiac patients who didn’t smoke.’

Now read the broken up version:

‘ Cigarette smoking impairs the anti-oxidative system, which largely depends on the activity of Nrf2 and Ahr. Both of these transcription factors need to translocate to the nucleus and bind to their response elements ARE and XRE, respectively. This induces the expression of anti-oxidative and cell defence enzymes. Although acute exposure of endothelial cells in vitro to cigarette smoke induces the anti-oxidative system, prolonged exposure inhibits it.’

Did you notice what happened there? We can breathe again! We also have less information and fewer words, but the core idea is still there. That’s what I aim for.